


To Survive All Else

by Angeluscaligo



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Dark Dumbledore, Dark Harry, Dubious Morality, Manipulative Harry, Morally Grey Harry Potter, Multi, Other, light - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-06
Updated: 2018-12-01
Packaged: 2019-03-01 06:20:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13288842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Angeluscaligo/pseuds/Angeluscaligo
Summary: In a life where being smart means not being beaten or starved, Harry Potter turns out to be someone who should never be underestimated - someone who would go to the very edges of morality to preserve his life and to enact a vengeance on those who deserve it.





	1. Chapter 1

Harry had always known he was different, ever since he could remember. The Dursleys, evidently, knew so to, as he could judge from the stark differences between how they treated Dudley and how they treated him. So he began anticipating and planning as best he could, as soon he could. By age eight, he knew the Dursleys better than they knew themselves. He knew how to push Aunt Petunia to her limits, to that point where she could be forgiving and where she stopped caring at all. For her it was when her eyes became a bit tighter and her lips became a thin line – that was the moment he would always back down and placate her best he could, to prevent tipping her over the edge and moving her into punishing him for his so-called “insolence”. Her other limit, when Harry could move her into treating him better than she otherwise would, where those days that her gardening – or rather, Harry's gardening considering he did all the work, would earn her that ever-so-covetted neighbourhood Garden Gnome prize. A hideous little thing, vaguely shaped like an ordinary garden gnome painted gold – given to the winner to be held privately for six months, before moving to its next winner. Aunt Petunia, ever since Harry had figured her private pride for possessing the odious thing, had held it in a single streak for the past five years. So, whenever the new year's judgement came up and she began focussing Harry's chores on the garden, he would follow her orders, go beyond her expectations and sire her the prize, year and year again. And whenever she became somewhat petulant and began pressuring him on subject of his chores, he simply reminded her of the prize, vaguely threaten a less than perfect job and cower her into a more complacent mood. Afterwards, however, he would always exceed her expectations again and earn himself a thin smile and the reward of some treats – but always behind Uncle Vernon's back and out of Dudley's sight. She loathed the idea that either might know he could hold influence over her and that was what kept her obviously present revenge from showing outwardly.

Uncle Vernon was both more difficult and more easy to cower and placate. He was more easily angered, something Harry suspected had more to do with Vernon's own personal shortcomings in life rather than Harry's perceived shortcoming. Whenever Vernon received negative comment or remarks from his boss at his job, he would fester in quiet rage, waiting for Harry to commit a mistake and invite Vernon's rage upon him. But Harry had learned to recognize the signs of Vernon's internal anger and so he almost always managed to broker a peace. He would remember the days that Uncle Vernon's boss did the monthly check-ups, weary to always placate Aunt Petunia in buying more bacon the day before. Combined with Uncle Vernon's favourite hearty meal and Harry's utter silence and seeming absence after dinner, Harry almost always made Uncle Vernon less agitated and a lot calmer by the time Vernon would be able to actually focus on Harry and not his diner. Both some days, even that wasn't enough – and those were the days that Harry found himself forced to confront Vernon with his less-than-socially acceptable behavoirs. Such as, for instance, Vernon's monthly bets that were placed the day he would get his pay-check. And since Vernon somehow always managed to bet on the wrong teams, it meant that, sometimes, his pay-check was less than ideal if Aunt Petunia's attention were to be aimed towards it. Or so Harry told Vernon – and when Vernon would than stand there in barely controlled rage, with a face as red as a tomato, Harry would also remind him about the single time he had found Uncle Vernon with his pants down and the next-door neighbour's wife's lips around his embarrasingly small prick. That, Harry remarked to himself, always shut the fat walrus of a man up. And Vernon would stew in quiet anger, barely able to look Harry in the eyes and suddenly more focussed on buying Aunt Petunia a nice bouqeut. There were also days that Harry knew Uncle Vernon was quite content and those were the moments that he would go beyond his usual placations, making sure Uncle Vernon received a hearty dinner, a good pint of lager and find himself in an extremely tidy house. Those were the days that Harry managed to save up some money, when Vernon, reluctantly but voluntarily, would shove some small change – and very rarely even a bill, into Harry's hands, urging the boy to be extremely wise in spending it and to keep his silence regarding unnamed and personal matters.

Dudley, annoyingly enough, was the most difficult of them all to cower into submission – at least in the beginning. Since he had no real secrets or shames, safe for the usual childhood fears of silly things, such as spiders or clowns and such, Dudley rarely deigned to listen to Harry's veiled threats – that or he simply failed to recognize them for what they were. So Harry had had to resort to more extreme and stealthy methods. So, whenever Dudley had wronged Harry, by calling him names or actually hitting him, he would find himself, by next morning, in a bed soaked to the springs with piss. Of course, Harry always managed to make himself scarce during those times and nobody ever found out his involvement, not really – but it was always too easy to sneak in Dudley's room past midnight and soak the fat pubescent teen's fingers in a nice glass of water, till Harry heard the telltale trickle of piss soaking through the matrass, by which time Harry would remove his traces, sneak back into his cupboard and close it from inside using his trusty coathanger. Of course, Harry didn't do this every time – he kept the pattern somewhat irregular and thereby more difficult to figure out. Sometimes he would make certain things go missing, making sure they ended up being found a few days later, hidden in some nook or cranny of the household. Other times, something creepy, like a newt or a spider, would find its way in Dudley's closet or bed – but always on rainy days, such as when creepy things were want to crawl into warmer places and dry houses. Of course, then there were also the times that Dudley did stuff which even his parents would find disappointing - though they came as doding as they could when it concerned their son. And those things were, after a few years, what kept Dudley firmly – and very easily, in line. After all, considering the Dursley's pride on being a perfectly normal and prize-winning sub-urban family, how ever would they react to the fact that their son, their pride and joy, had frequently visited a very infamous cruising-site notorious for being a breeding ground of buggery and debauchery? Of course, Harry didn't begrudge Dudley for that, especially not considering he had his own personal sense of appreciation for both the male and female forms, young though as he was – he knew beauty when he saw it. But using it as leverage did keep Dudley out of Harry's way – and in return Harry turned a blind eye when Dudley was buggering and Aunt Petunia was inquiring after Dudley's absence. And if Harry sometimes bought condoms and slipped them into Dudley's nightstand, ready for Dudley to find them if he ever needed them, that was that. Harry might not like Dudley, but he still didn't wish him to contract any sort of communicable diseases. Harry just wanted to be left in peace, no matter the means to that end – but he did have his limits, and giving way to others sometimes neccesitated that..

In school, Harry paid heed to every lesson he could learn, whenever he could. He learned his textbooks inside-out, able to recite them from memory and able to deduce from those lessons other answers to untold questions. He never spoke up during classes, happy to stay unnoticed, but always ready to answer when questioned and eager to outperform the tasks set to him, be it by homework or group-assignments. His teachers adored him, even if most of them found him to be too quiet for his age and lacking in friends. It wasn't like Harry didn't try making friends – he honestly did try, but for some reason they all found him “detached and cold”, which he never really understood. By the time he got into fifth year, base school, his favourite teacher scheduled him to be tested for his IQ. Harry thought it a minor bother, and the Dursleys only allowed it after they found out it wouldn't cost them a thing. So Harry got tested, five tests over the course of a week, and by the end the one testing him had become quite silent. They took him and the Dursleys aside, matter of factly stating Harry was an extremely intelligent child, well above an IQ of a hundred and thirty, and thus was elligable for higher standards of education – but since that meant an extra expendature of funds already unlikely to be spend on Harry, if ever, the Dursleys had declined that opportunity, if rather politely. Harry found he didn't care, not really – he had been able to homeschool himself beyond his peers' study-levels for years by that point and he didn't see how he couldn't continue doing so. Sure, the teachers were let down by his agreement with the Dursleys, but they knew he'd be alright – or so he hoped. All in all, by his eleventh birthday, he had managed to make his life quite endurable – even if he did have freak accidents once so every few months. Living with the Dursleys was harder after these incidents, but he had learned well and such tempers from their side never lasted long when he focussed on placating them.

There had been the incident at school, which he had come to call the 'Transference Incident', when he had been chased by a few bullies and he had somehow, inexplicably, ended up on the roof of the school building. He had managed to find his way down easily enough and nobody had noticed, outside of the bullies wondering where he had gone all of a sudden. Later, he learned what teleportation was – and since a black-out didn't correspond with the facts of the matter, he accepted that. Somehow, he had teleported. Or transferred, as he preferred to call it – teleportation, being as it was still very much only science-fiction at that time, sounded too unbelievable. Transference was a much neater and cleaner word for the act that had happened. Then there had been the 'Serpentile Communication Incident', whereby he had somehow managed to converse, sort of, with a snake. It was a small corn-snake, and it had simply said a nice polite 'thank you' when he had left a dead mouse near it, but it had exhilirated him beyond words. Once he had gotten used to that, he found he could actually converse with nigh any snake – which made spending time in the garden much more interesting. Once the snakes found they could talk with him, they somehow sort of accepted him as one of their own. So when he had said, one day, that near the potter's field where a lot more mice than in the suburbs, they had gone, gorged themselves till bursting and returned a week later to express their eternal gratitude. After that, he had sent them coralling mice and rats to some of Aunt Petunia's gardening-opponents, to increase her chances of winning the Gardening Gnome. He had done barely any work, and with the usual pests almost completely absent, Aunt Petunia's roses had won her the meritous Rose Ribbon, an award of the national gardening club rewarded only once a decade. Aunt Petunia had given him twenty quid that day, and Harry had thanked the snakes tremendously, promising they could ask anything if they ever wanted anything.

There had been a few 'Telekinetic Accidents', whereby things had broken themselves during those rare moments when he ever really lost control over his emotions. A plate, a few glasses, one time an unfortunately expensive piece of crockery from some vaguely illustrious great-aunt on Petunia's side of the family – Harry never did manage to remember that old goat's actual name, she was always simply called 'Auntie Dear'. There had been other incidents, which Harry found less easily classifiable – if he could classify them at all, that was. Those strange moments when something, often a thing he had been desperately looking for for quite a while, simply willed itself near him. One memorable time had been when he had been searching for one of Aunt Petunia's fashion magazines. He had been looking for it almost a whole day and he had been fed up, fervently wishing it was somewhere obvious. He had suddenly heard a shocked cry from Dudley's locked room, which was ever only locked whenever Dudley did 'shamefull things' as Petunia called them – and suddenly the magazine had found itself on the table near him, if slightly crinkled. A closer look, however, had convinced Harry it more appropriate to simply throw the thing away – he sincerely doubted, after what Dudley had done around it, if Aunt Petunia would've ever touched it again. But aside those incidents, accidents and strange occasional going-ons, Harry had found life extremely bearable, predictable and all-around easy to navigate – at which point the blasted letters had begun to find their way to him, thereby upending his whole routine and all his future plans. At that time, when the real implications hadn't yet sunk in, Harry had vaguely entertained the idea of sueing for harrasment and breach of privacy. Then again, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, at that point, had merely been a faceless letter-sender disrupting his private life – and Harry could never have imagined the sheer depth of the changes that were about to happen around him.

And so began the preparations for Harry Potter's First Year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardy.


	2. Chapter II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The day of the First Letter

The day that the first letter had arrived, Harry had managed to placate the whole Dursley clan in a very enjoyable mood – which meant that they'd not bother him and rather focus on their respective hobbies after a very fulfilling breakfast. The letter came in at 9 am sharp, on the 24th of July 1991, right before Harry's feet as he awaited the mail-man's punctual delivery. It was the standard-batch off letters, ranging from dull adds to the usual bills – except there now was also a letter addressed to him. It was a velum envelope, which immediately struck him as odd – because who the heck still uses vellum in the age of bleached glue-pressed paper? Then the odd colour of the ink, the curious weapon shield-logo, the outré name, … If Harry's interest hadn't been piqued by then, it was certainly roused from deep slumber by a rooster with a megaphone. Unfortunately, so had Dudley's – before Harry knew he was there, the fat little shit had snatched the letter from Harry's fingers and run screaming from the top of his lungs! “Harry's got a letter! Harry's got a letter, dad!” Uncle Vernon's brows, struggling to be noticed from the avalanche of wrinkles that immediately smothered them as they formed at hearing Dudley's screaming, slowly and inexorably heaved their way up to perform the best possible attempt of Uncle Vernon frowning in surprise – though Harry had supposed this action to be well-known to such expertly trained brows, great actors as they always were in stead of Vernon's taut and nigh unpliable face. After all, something has to convey some emotion, hasn't it?

“A letter, boy? Who on Earth in their right mind would want to send you a letter? Must be some pyramid-scheme from some automatic posting-centre, trying to use you as a wrench in befuddling our hard-earned money!” Uncle Vernon's detrite mind was already turning its cranky wheels to some old avenues of money-piquers and tax-rats, with Harry at the pivotal centre of the schemes they could befall – before Vernon finally read the sender of the letter, turned pale as a ghost and started tremoring his large meaty hands towards Aunt Petunia as he tried to stutter some words through his abject horror. Petunia, immediately weary at Vernon's behaviour, took the letter as if it were some corroded bomb, ready to set off at the slightest touch of her slender emaciated fingers – before she too read the sender, at which point her fingers immediately remembered their usual strength and proceeded to tear up the paper 'efore throwing the snatches of paper into the fireplace. Harry, knowing he should not betray his abject outrage at their tearing up his letter, kept his composure, mentally noting to berieve the couple for their defiance of their barely-kept pact of non-aggression towards one another. “Go to your room, Potter! Not a word about this to anyone, you hear me?” Petunia's shrieking voice, though just barely below the hearing range of their neighbours, was enough to solidify Harry's plans for the next day, as he obediently strutted up the stairs and locked the door of his room behind him.

Harry remained very silent for the remainder of the day, which kept Vernon and Petunia more alert than any objections ever would have had. The next day, Harry made them the same breakfast as he had yesterday, sidling them an enormous quantity of bacon, beans and spam – before obediently standing by the door, awaiting the mail. This time, however, the mail-man also received a letter – from Harry, addressed to Vernon's regional boss, inside of which letter there were a few photographs and several directions to very suspicious odds in the company ledgers. And, again, Harry received his letter – a perfect copy of the previous one, but this time of vellum a fair bit thicker and less easy to tear apart. Pocketing it away, anxious to keep Dudley out of the know as opposed to the day before, Harry delivered the mail dutifully to Uncle Vernon. “Any letter for you today, boy?” Vernon asked, with a slight tremor in his voice that was barely ever present safe in instances where his carefully crafted reputation were at stake. “No, Uncle Vernon – you must've been right. Wrong address I guess – or some pyramid-scheme. Guess I'm old and stupid enough to fall for them now.” On any other day, this cheeky comment would've earned Harry some reprisals, but Vernon was obviously all too glad to hear about the absence of a follow-up letter, which made quite a bit dimmer than usual. “Good, good. Now go do the dishes – and the garden needs some work today. Some bloody birds have been nesting in the trees, it seems – branches and poop everywhere. Damn pigeons...” Vernon's voice slowly diminished to an annoyed yet content rumble as he settled down in his couch and began reading the newspaper. Petunia settled herself down in a chair outside, her knitting with her, as she was quite intent to keep an eye on Harry until this whole stupid letter-thing had gone from her mind completely – which would take a day or two at most, Harry reasoned as he began shovelling the branches and poop from the lawn.

That evening, Harry finally got around to reading the letter by the light of a dim candle. The hand-writing was quite neat indeed, Harry remarked as he slowly ready the contents of the first page of the letters inside the envelope.

“Dear Mr Harry Potter. We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment. Term begins on 1 September. We await your owl by no later than 31 July. Yours sincerely, Minerva McGonagall - Deputy Headmistress.” 

Harry didn't quite know what to make of this, before he began reading the second letter – which was quite a list of apparent school supplies as desired for the offered curriculum this school seemed to advance upon its pupils. Robes, dragon-hide gloves, cauldrons? Harry was smart enough to make the connotation with the traditional notions of witchcraft and magic, but whatever school would portray itself as a school of magic? It sounded incredibly daft and aloof – until he started thinking about it more empirically. The reaction of Vernon and Petunia seemed to hint prescience of the letter's arrival – or at least of knowledge of the sender, which implied it was somehow authentic in a way. Had they seen similar letters before then? Surely not for Dudley – the oaf wouldn't ever shut up about such a memorable hoax, if hoax it were. That implied that either they had once, either or both, gotten one – or someone they knew. Then there was the magic education thing – which struck a chord with Harry's various Accidents, which all seemed very much like magic or something supernatural. Another hour of thinking through all the options and Harry became convinced – the letter was real, and therefore too was the school, the curriculum, the existence of magic and his own innate ability of using magic. Which then meant Vernon and Petunia had known somehow – which explain their eternal scorn of his presence, hatred for his inexplicable Accidents and general distrusts towards any kindness he performed towards them. And thus he began his reply to the letter, not caring how he'd ever sent it off afterwards.

The next morning, before Harry fully woke up, a tapping resounded against his window – where a grand barmy owl stood perched, evidently waiting for Harry to wake up and open the bloody window already. Groggily rising and almost by automatic response opening the surface from which the knocking resounded, Harry was suddenly beset by enormous wings of feather and down. Finally waking up entirely, Harry just managed to suppress a scream as the owl fluttered past him, scooped up the letter and set off through the window again. Barely a second passed and as Harry watched the owl fly off into the distance, somehow he had an inkling he'd better prepare a suitcase that very day. Vernon and Petunia, luckily, were none the wiser, as he prepared breakfast as usual, fetched the mail as usual, did his chores as usual and remained silent as usual... Until dinner, which had gone as usual – before some calamitous force suddenly launched the front door of its hinges, through the kitchen door and against the cabinets opposite that. As Vernon and Petunia screamed in horror alike pigs in some slaughterhouse and Dudley ran out of the kitchen, into the garden and through the hedge, Harry remained exactly where he stood. As some massive lumbering figure slowly clambered through the front entrance and passed the cloud of debris and dust, a deep voice sounded.  
“Sorry 'bout that!” As the figure entered the kitchen, picked up the front door and placed it back, Uncle Vernon finally seemed to regain his coherence and voice. “I demand that you leave at once, Sir! You are breaking and entering!” Vernon quickly jumped to his feet, before pushed back into his seat by the lumbering giant. “Dry up, Dursley! You great prune!”

And thus Harry met Rubeus Hagrid, Keeper of Keys and Grounds at Hogwarts...


End file.
